Liminal Spaces
by A.Hooligan
Summary: Webisode Based. Beware language, violence, and mature themes. What happened between those two webisode scenes in which Druitt holds Ashley captive?
1. Chapter 1 Introduction

Webisode Based.

No Ownership. No Profit.

* * *

As always, beware bad language in this story.

* * *

In this case, also beware some mature, sexually suggestive and thoroughly violent – and disturbing – themes and moments, as one might expect in any story involving a Jack the Ripper who actually enjoyed his psycho-sexual killing spree. I saw Montague John Druitt, Jack the Ripper, as absolutely relishing his murderous activities in the webisodes.

* * *

There are things I've always wondered about the Sanctuary webisodes, things that, for me, simply cry for an explanation, particularly in the sequence of scenes where Druitt is holding Ashley captive, namely:

_` A marionette or cloth dolly is lying on the grated stairs in the first sequence of scenes with Ashley and Druitt. Alexei is playing with the same marionette or cloth dolly in the next sequence of scenes, but it's significance – and origin –is never explained._

_` A set of packing cases behind the old office chair in which Ashley, bound, is seated. In the first sequence of scenes, they're closed. In the second, they're open, with excelsior or straw packing material scattered about. Yet, we're never shown what is, or was, in them._

_` What did Druitt do with Ashley while he was retrieving Alexei and leaving the old subway map as a clue for her mother? Surely, he didn't leave her there at the subway station, tied up in the chair. Webisode Ashley would have been gone, literally like a shot, with more than a moment's opportunity in which to make her escape._

_` Why does Ashley seem as if she's been forced to make some sort of unwelcome admission, at the very least, in the second set of scenes in the abandoned subway station, and what was she forced to admit? Per the dialogue, she hasn't had to give up her denial of Druitt's claim of paternity, so what produced the change in her attitude from straight out defiance to a sort of chastened, wistfully-sullen caution when dealing with Druitt?_

_` What is it about this kidnaping in particular, that traumatized Ashley right into post-traumatic stress and debilitating flashbacks in the second Webisode (installments 5 through 8)? The dialogue here leads one to conclude that Webisode Ashley has been kidnaped before, so what is it about this kidnaping that is so very much harder for her to deal with?  
_

_` What happened to the pendant Ashley is so visibly wearing, with which Druitt uses his knife to toy during the first set of subway station scenes? It's just as visibly gone in the second sequence._

_

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_

This story is the result of me producing my own explanations.

And, the way I see it, if I'm going to create those explanations for myself, I might as well entertain myself, too, in the doing.


	2. Chapter 2 The Lair Of The Bald Psycho

Webisode Based.

No ownership. No profit.

* * *

Something chimed, a small, melodious sound totally out of place floating in the dank, shadowed air of the derelict subway station. And it was coming from – the psycho?

He smiled coolly at her expression, lifting a gold pocket watch out of a vest pocket, and doing something to it so that it opened and stopped chiming. He pondered the time, the intricate chasing on the watch case winking like red hot wires embedded in the gold in the dull light, then closed the watch and returned it to its pocket with another smirk – at her.

Ashley Magnus scowled at him.

The psycho laughed delightedly. "Such an expression! Only imagine, my dear, if your face were to freeze like that"

"If you don't like the view, then don't look at me, freak," Ashley snapped.

The bald man snorted, still smiling.

"Such a sweet, demure and charming girl," he mused. "I shall enjoy teaching you manners – and all manner of… things… my dear."

Ashley curled her lip and scoffed. "You wish."

"Indeed I do. And, I shall have my wish, darling daughter. After all – I already have you."

"That'll change," Ashley promised him.

That earned her another snort. "Such a charming girl," he repeated to himself, strolling back to the grimy table across the room, where he'd left the rest of the bottle of water he'd forced on her.

She frowned as she watched him, and kicked her feet against their bonds while she worked to stretch the loops of rope binding her wrists behind her back. The stuff was nylon. There ought to be some stretch to be had in it –

The psycho checked the handful of grubby wooden boxes – miniature crates – whatever – stacked behind the table, and apparently found one to his liking, because he picked it up with a little 'Ahah!' of triumph, and turned back to her with it in his hands, grinning his scar-faced, Al Capone smirk.

"Ah, yes. Here we are," he said, hefting the box in his arms and displaying it to her as if he actually expected her to be interested.

"It's a box," Ashley declared.

"It is a packing crate," the psycho corrected, still smirking as he carried it around behind her.

'_Shit!'_ Ashley yipped to herself, clutching at the rope around her wrists to hide any play she might have made visible in it.

The box clunked to the dusty floor. Ashley started as something rang and grated like steel dragged on cement.

Something made a soft dull sound like heavy fabric falling onto a solid surface, and the psycho's shoes creaked as he crouched, or knelt, or something.

Ashley frowned as she heard a nail squealing as it was pried out of wood.

'_Pry bar,' _she said to herself, grimacing as the sound was repeated. '

'_Who the hell __nailed__ something into a box to transport it – especially with what sounded like so many nails – in this day and age? And what could be in a box that size that was important enough for this psycho freak to drag it around on his adventures in teleportation, anyway? A weapon? His '__My Big Fat Psycho Date With Helen Magnus__' scrapbook and photo album? The meds he was supposed to be taking?_

'_Nooo, that would've had to be in a bigger box – a much bigger box,'_ Ashley corrected herself, jerking in the chair as the theoretical steel pry bar hit the actual cement floor with a resounding clang.

Wood clunked on cement after it, and she realized the freak must have gotten his cherished little 'packing crate' opened.

Something rustled, like… rats in dry grass?

'_He has a box of dried straw?'_ Ashley thought._ 'Baldy has a __Rumpelstilskin__ complex? Oh, please!'_

A little clink of sound interrupted the rustling. The psycho let out another little 'ahah!' of satisfaction, and she heard the thick plumpf of his leather coat falling out straight as he stood up again.

Something grated, softly, with a high, ringing undertone, and Ashley Magnus repressed a shudder, the hair at the nape of her neck prickling hard, as an image flashed into her mind: old-fashioned glass bottles and tall flasks, each with a glass stopper carefully ground to a perfect fit, all lined up soldier-straight along the back of her mother's cluttered lab bench… Glass bottles full of anesthetics, and preserved botanicals, toxic chemicals and acid, flasks full of odd, deadly solutions and poisonous tinctures…

Ashley bit her lip. What would a psycho freak keep in glass bottles, carefully nailed up in wooden shipping crates packed in straw? Acid? Poison? And why would he need it now?

'_Oh, fuuuuccckkkk. This is __so__ not gonna be good.'_

"All in order," the psycho said, cheerfully over a repeat of that grating sound of glass on glass, but there was nothing in his hands as he strolled back into view from behind her.

"Curious, are you, my dear?" he said, taking in her expression.

Ashley aimed a practiced look of utter disdain at him.

"Oh, I promise you a full explanation in due time, darling daughter. Come along now. We must go and collect my little friend, Alexi. Such a quiet boy – but, oh! How deadly he is!"

"You are not my father. And I don't want to go anywhere with a psycho like you," she growled, fugitive images of a long ago day fleeting in her mind's eye: the first time she'd walked the tie-beams in the hammer beam ceiling of the one-time chapter house, and Barney laughing and hugging her when she'd climbed down and run to him, laughing, ('That's my girl!') as the psycho paced around behind her again, and her nape prickled again until he reappeared, tucking some kind of cloth doll or toy into the pocket of his black-leather duster.

'_The psycho plays with __kiddy__toys__????'_ some peripheral part of her mind squawked.

The big, bald creep snorted. "I don't recall asking for your opinion – or your acquiescence, young lady. You'll accompany me regardless, since I obviously dare not leave you behind if I hope to find you here when I return."

'_Toys later, mayhem now,'_ Ashley told herself firmly, focusing herself for the plan that winked into existence in her brain.

"Oh, don't think I'd ever wait for the likes of you, freak," she growled, bouncing a booted foot on the dusty concrete floor, testing the footing, and warming her muscles.

Baldy chuckled, nodding to himself as he paced nearer. "Ah, yes. That's my side of the family speaking."

"In your dreams, freak. You aren't part of my family. Period!"

That Al Capone smile made itself into a grimace.

"Charming," he grated out. "But, you'll soon learn better. I have it in mind to prevail upon Alexi to help me in determining some important family truths for you and me, daughter dear."

"What are you blithering about now?" Ashley sniped, hitching her chin up to glare at him as he stopped right in front of her, and –

She whipped her bound feet up in a lightning fast kick, telescoping her entire body up and out of the old metal office chair in a single blast of motion, just as the psycho took another step –

Ashley crowed in elation as her heels slammed into the psycho's thigh, even as it, and he, vanished under her boots in a flash of green light, and she thumped down to an awkward, crouched landing on the gritty floor with his harsh, shocked grunt still hanging in the dank air.

Alone.

She looked around, breathing hard, as she yanked at her bonds.

"Hope I broke it, freak," she said to the ether, working the play in the ropes. Close, close...

"Too bad I didn't get you in the balls – I'd have had all the time I'd ever want to get loose and get out of here. But – y'can't have everything. And, right now, like my Mom likes to say 'Chop, chop!' Better move this along – "

The light flared over her like an explosion underwater and she shot to her feet, still bound –

Long hands snatched her backward and up like an act of God while she shouted and bucked and –

She was pinned against the heat of the psycho's body, the edges of his black leather coat slapping softly around her own leather-clad knees as she thrashed. And then the cold steel of his long, narrow knife blade nestled itself against to the arch of her throat, just as firmly as the bulge of his hardening cock nestled against her hands bound at the small of her back.

Ashley froze, remembering the taste that steel had left on her lips – blood and iron and death upon death upon death… and, suddenly, she desperately wanted her race leathers, spine protector, hip armor, kidney pad, knee sliders, and thick, thick kangaroo hide – anything to keep her body farther away from this murdering psycho-freak who claimed to have sired her...

'_Mom wouldn't do that – Mom would never do __him__,'_ she told herself, not daring to so much as speak.

"You are definitely my daughter," he purred against her ear, nuzzling into her hair while he spoke, as if the situation were simply too luscious not to indulge himself. "A girl after my own heart, in fact. In this moment, I could even regret that you are my daughter – something like that would be a once in a lifetime event, as your mother would no doubt appreciate... though I don't regret the prospect of raising you properly, oh no, not at all. We shall have such memorable times, my dear. So very, very memorable…"

The flat of the blade rocked against the curve of her throat, and his body nudged up against hers, hard cock bumping her bound hands –

'_And he tied me so I can't even grab it and grind it in my hands to get him off me. God. Dear God – '_

Ashley's gorge rose, a wall of acid thick in her throat and she swallowed convulsively, fighting it down. She knew, with the certainty of time's own passage, she was dead if she so much as twitched, much less puked, but, oh God...

He rubbed his face in her hair again, and she breathed in tiny, shallow pants, jaws clenched shut as his hips worked against her.

'_God, if he actually gets himself off against my ass, there's no force in this universe that'll keep my gorge down – '_

"Oh, my dear, I shall so enjoy raising you properly, regardless of the extent of your inheritance," he crooned against her scalp.

'_Oh, God – just give me the chance to kill this freak! __Please__ give me a the chance to kill him – '_

The hand holding her against his body trailed up her torso, tracing the slopes and curves like a connoisseur examining a bronze. He tugged the jacket zipper farther down that he'd previously lowered with the blade of the knife still clapped to her throat, slid a broad hand inside the micro-fleece lined leather, and Ashley heard herself whine, the sound trapped by that knife blade before it could become the shriek it was meant to be, just like the explosion of revulsion that should have been a kick that shattered his skull was nothing but a tremble in the hips trapped between his thighs.

And that tremble made him chuckle and press his hard cock even harder against her wrists.

"Oh my. I fanned you before, my sweet, yet… the fabrics they make here and now have such fascinating textures," he mused, the words hot and fetid against her ear while that hand smoothed over the spandex covering her ribs, slid up them as his cock jerked against the layers of wool and leather that separated it from her skin, as it moved against them, and her.

'_Oh, God – oh, God, no – '_

"Of course, these… 'zippers'… are a fascination unto themselves. To machine so many tiny pieces of metal with such incredible precision for no other reason than – what? To permit young trulls to dab it up even faster when they're offered a shilling for their… services?"

He chuckled, weighing first one full breast in his hand, then the other, circled a spandex-covered nipple with his thumb so that her spine tensed like steel as she fought not to jerk away from him – and cut her own throat.

He snorted, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, and twisted that nipple through the fabric, hard.

The strangled squeal she emitted brought a guffaw of laughter.

"Not a problem I expect you to have, my dear," he warned, easing the pressure of the knife blade across her throat as he removed his hand from inside her jacket to slap her thigh as if he were congratulating a horse. The way her harsh start thrust her hips back against him, followed by an instant, revolted flinch forward made him laugh delightedly.

"Though, I do wonder how you might look in proper clothing. Such very nice teats you have. Young, high, firm, and still a very nice, heavy handful apiece. Pity they haven't been pierced. Just what one likes to work with – it's a shame that all that must wait, isn't it? But, alas that duty calls us, just now. We'll retrieve our young friend and see what he can tell us, on various subjects, and then we'll plan, eh? If worse comes to worse, I'll always have this event, when my daughter met her father, to savor in memory."

'_Work with my breasts – and he says he's my father! Oh God! He's a pervert, too!'_

"And now, my dear, I'm afraid I must make sure I'll survive our little trip, so – "

That knife blade pressed insistently to her bared throat again, and the broad, hot hand slid up her front, traced her clavicle with its damp palm so that she jerked back against him again, despite the way it pressed his cock against her hands. He chuckled as he lifted that hand to lay it over her mouth and nose – and clamp down like the wrath of a neglected God…

Darkness bloomed in the edges of her vision, flooded the shadows of the psycho's Bat Cave, and she fought, bucking against him, slamming a boot heel down on his foot so that he shouted and reminded her sternly to be still with the blade of the knife across her throat.

The darkness swallowed the world, and –


	3. Chapter 3 The Privacy of One's Own Home

Webisode Based.

No Ownership. No Profit.

* * *

" – be all right, I believe. She seems to be a very hardy sort of girl."

"She's pretty."

Hands on her face, turning it. She groaned, the sound stifled by the broad pad of tape plastered over her mouth, and someone laughed.

"She is quite pretty, isn't she? She favors her mother, thankfully."

"You know her?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"She is tied. Helpless. Like the other."

"She is tied – but I can assure you m'boy, she's far from helpless."

That… was the psycho's voice? And the other… Ghoul boy du jour?

But the little ghoul was back at – they were all back at the Sanctuary – if he'd been foolish enough to take her there to get the little ghoul –

Ashley Magnus opened her eyes to a view of shadows and thrashed abruptly, ropes snapping taut and biting into her skin as she fought, struggling on the floor of one of the – guest rooms –

"Enough of that," the psycho growled, and a boot slammed into her side.

She screamed, the sound stifled against the gag, and heard the little ghoul's gasp as his feet scurried backward in her line of sight.

Hard hands grabbed her, dragged her to her knees on the turkey carpet, careless of the force they employed or the mechanics of the joints they abused in the process.

Ashley swallowed hard against the bile in the back of her throat, pushing the awareness of her own pain away from the center of her attention.

'_Bruises and strains. Just bruises and strains. Later. Later,'_ she thought at her hurting body, trying to understand why she was in one of her Mother's prized guest rooms, not the isolation chamber in the lower levels which was where she knew they'd installed the murdering little ghoul and his tentacle. The cameras and surveillance systems in these guest rooms were discretionary – not always on like in the lower levels.

Oh, God – no one was going to see this, were they? No one was going to come. No help. There wouldn't be any help. The two freaks could do anything and no one would come…

The bald freak shoved her head down, blunt nails scraping stinging rowels in Ashley's scalp, and held her there by the scruff of the neck and a handful of hair as he strolled around her kneeling body in the dim light.

'_Next time it's definitely a boot to your balls, freak,'_ she growled to herself as he wrenched her head upward again, her neck strained and aching, her scalp burning with raw scrapes opened by his nails, and held her like that with the big hand he'd knotted into the hair at the nape of her neck.

He laughed at her expression, his smile wrinkling the livid scar that decorated his rawboned face.

'_Too bad they didn't kill you giving you that, freak.'_

"Oh, now there's an expression you learnt from your mother, my dear!" he chuckled, feeling in the pocket of his long, leather coat with his free hand. "If looks could kill, I'd be a dead man, wouldn't I?"

'_Damn straight, freak. Dead in lots and lots of tiny, little, __beautiful__ bloody pieces!'_

The psycho came up with a small, glass bottle in his hand, just like she'd thought, just like the kind that lived on her Mother's workbench, decorated with an foxed and age-mottled, paste-on label just like those bottles. There was even the tail end of some inscription done in faded Victorian copperplate on the label, just a letter or two, impossible to read from this angle…

But the labels on the bottles on her mother's workbench listed poisons…

And acid.

'_Oh, God – did that come out of his precious packing crate? Did he get it from the labs just now – '_

Ashley jerked as he brought the bottle around toward her, the clear contents sloshing like iridescent, glittering water as he moved it.

The psycho knotted his hand in her hair and yanked, hauling her head back toward him, arching her back and forcing her to shift all of her weight back onto her bound feet while she cursed at him behind the gag.

Ashley narrowed her eyes at him and scowled, but he just kept smiling that mad, Al Capone smile. Oh yeah, it was deliberate. He knew he'd preempted any attempt to kick him. Shit head.

"Oh, no, my dear. Do try to behave yourself. We will do this. You have very interesting potential inheritances waiting to be explored."

_'Oh no I don't, freak. I already know I got the blonde hair, blue eyes and Magnus attitude from Mom, and __you__ aren't related to me!'_

Ashley rolled her eyes, swallowing against the hammering of her pulse, trying to follow the bottle as he brought it toward her, wriggling, fighting as much as she could, no matter how it hurt her aching body.

'_He'll have to take the tape off to pour it down my throat, and then, if I scream – God, at least I can bite the freak.'_

Do you really want that perverted freak's blood in your mouth? A little voice inquired inside her skull, and Ashley choked back a surge of nausea.

He held the bottle over her, grinning, clearly enjoying her struggles as he held it where she couldn't see it, and she thrashed and fought to get it back in view, before he held the bottle down in front of her to draw the stopper one handed.

_'If he expects me to compliment his dexterity, he's got another thing comin','_ Ashley thought, squirming as the stopper grated free of the bottle, ringing softly, and a hint of something slicingly pungent tinged the dim air.

'_Oh, God – it's gonna burn going down – '_ she thought, trying to lean away from the stuff.

"Ah, yes. You do well to fear this, dear daughter. Your life is about to change irrevocably," he chuckled down at her, yanking her head sharply to still her restive motions – then kicking her, hard, when she kept struggling.

Ashley yelled against her gag, and glared up at him through watering eyes, imagining acid in the bottle, blinking back pain tears and panting hard as she planned her next move.

"You're a sitting target, m'dear," he told her in a tone full of sweet, salacious savor. "And I will break your leg, dear daughter, if you don't keep still. Do keep that fact at the forefront of your mind."

'_Son of bitch, your ass is grass!'_ she promised him silently.

"Much better. Now, observe this fluid in this bottle. You see, your mother made this compound for me. Is it not pretty?"

He held the bottle in front of her eyes, displaying the elegant, old-fashioned copperplate on the yellowed label a hand-span from her eyes –

And Ashley sucked in a breath, reaction sliding over her skin like ice.

'_The handwriting on that label – oh, God – it's true… It's Mom's handwriting. It's true. Oh, God – it's true! She __did__ make it…'_

He waved the glass bottle at her with his free hand, the clear liquid sloshing in glistening, iridescence-sheened waves. The agitation seemed to release a sharp, pungent, harshly chemical scent into the still air. The smell hit her nose and reality dove to the left, and rolled in huge, wallowing swoops. Ashley heaved against the gag sealing her mouth.

The psycho laughed at her reaction. "Very good, my dear! Normal humans, and Abnormals who lack gifts of a certain… sort… don't react at all to this. See my little friend Alexi there? Steady as a rock? But you, and I – you'll notice I'm holding it at your nose, not mine – we feel something from it, don't we? Even just as little as this lends us an intense sensation. I'm very pleased with you, my dear. This augurs quite well for the success of our little experiment here."

Ashley glared at him – at least in his direction – dizzy and sick with the smell of the stuff, and wished fervently that if she was going to barf, she could do it all over him.

'_Oh, God – what is in that bottle!'_

Baldy laughed at her again.

"Ah, me. The faces you pull are so entertaining, my dear. A perfect little barbarian you are."

'_You have no idea what I am, asshole,'_ Ashley thought, throat working convulsively against her nausea.

"You see, this compound has several curious properties. Some, your mother intended, and some I've discovered quite by accident. First, she made it to be absorbed through the skin. I know not how that works, merely that it does. So you needn't think you can avoid a dose in your current predicament, my dear."

Ashley considered how pleasant the freak would look, blue-lipped with cyanosis, clawing at his neck, strangling to death with that damned bottle jammed down his stringy throat.

"Second, a small dose of the stuff produces a certain effect in those who possess particular… gifts. It locks those gifts away, quite firmly, rendering them inaccessible for a period which appears to be based on the dose of the compound and the individual in question. After which, those gifts return stronger than ever, and wild to be used."

'_Then drink the stuff yourself, psycho!'_ she growled to herself, watching the iridescent ripples of fluid slosh back and forth, imagining her mother pasting the label on the bottle – 'Essence of Freak Bane.'

"Third – a large dose has an effect strangely opposite to that of the small. It frees the gift entirely, and unleashes it from immediate conscious control. Even if the person never knew they carried such powers at all, this will bring them from the depths of the mind to the light of day."

Ashley clenched her eyes shut. _'Oh, God. No. No. Not again. Oh, God – not again.'_

…_a big, burly man in a dirty, green sweatshirt trying to drag the skinny, shouting form of Justin Spenser toward a battered station wagon while she pounded at the balding, smelly creep, and the sound of Henry Foss's retreating footsteps – and screams – faded around the corner. Henry could yell all he wanted – nobody would come. There was nobody home in this neighborhood at this time of day – Henry had walked them home from school before. He was an adult. He should have seen that. She was just a little kid and __she'd__ seen it – but Mom said it was Henry's nature to live to fight another day, instead of ever fighting this day. So… It was all up to Justin and her, while Henry went to find help that didn't exist – and Justin's heart condition meant he wasn't even as strong as she was, despite being more than two years older and four or five inches taller. _

"_Let him go, you jerk! He has a heart condition!" she yelled and hit the creep again as hard as she could. If only she was as tall as her mother. If only - _

_Justin's sneakers clumped on the dusty sidewalk, and he yelled, his voice cracking, just as she got in a good kick to the back of the creep's knee._

_The big, smelly goon went down with a howl, and Ashley darted forward to grab Justin, hauling at his hands in desperation._

"_Get up! Get Up, Juss! We have to run!"_

_Justin gasped his way to his feet, staggered after her – and fell down again, with a thump and a yelp, the creep's meaty hand locked around his ankle. _

_Justin's hands scrabbled at the dusty sidewalk, tried to cling to the crack between slabs, but even his long fingers couldn't hold onto it when the creep twisted his ankle and wrenched – _

_Justin screamed, a high, tearing, terrifying sound that seemed to shatter something inside her head in time to the sound of ligaments snapping – and –_

_Ashley felt the power lash out of her gleaming with the same ice-slick, liquid weight as her mother's wrath, saw it go in a lance of golden-blue light, saw the creep tumble backward, yelling, to thump against a telephone pole and slide to the ground, bonelessly limp –_

_She darted back to Justin, panting in air that burned with every breath, the world reeling around her with every step, only to face a horrified coffee-brown stare. _

_And seven-year-old Ashley couldn't tell if he was afraid of the pain, or the creep – or her._

"_You – Ley – you – was that – "_

"_I think – I – I think so," she managed, not looking him in those huge brown eyes, as she scrabbled to get an arm under his body._

"_Thank you," he whispered, still half-sobbing in reaction. "That is – so cool. So – wow."_

_Ashley grabbed his arm and pulled it over her shoulder half-crying with relief alone. She winced, grimacing as his arm yanked blonde hairs out of her ragged pony tail in the process. She hauled him to his feet, straining under his weight and height._

"_Wow later – " she gasped. "We gotta get out of here while we have the chance!"_

_Justin Spenser hadn't been able to carry much of his own weight, but mutual desperation provided them enough strength to stagger away together…_

The bald freak jerked her hair fiercely, and twenty-one-year-old Ashley yelled behind her gag, eyes watering at the pain of it.

"Pay attention, child! You are about to test this very effect with Alexi himself to encourage you to make your best effort. First, I shall dose you with your mother's concoction. And then, you will try to defend yourself with any powers you may have inherited, whilst Alexi tries to kill you."

Ashley gulped in a sharp breath, feeling her own eyes widening.

'_Oh, God. No. No – I'll have to use it. I'll have to use it and I don't even want to have it – Fuck, I don't even know if it's still there! And if Mom finds out… God, what happens to me, if Mom finds out…'_

Ashley stared up at the freak, standing there grinning for all he thought he was worth, rolled her eyes to watch the ghoul boy du jour nod and brace himself like a kid about to compete in the state Keep Away championship –

"Your eyes are very wide, my dear. Though… perhaps… not as wide as they might be… Hmm. Yes. I think the idea of having such powers is not the surprise to you it might have been. Very interesting indeed."

He leaned down, smirking, and smacked a kiss on the top of her head as Ashley flinched and thrashed in his grip. Blonde hairs tickled down around her cheeks, yanked free by his iron grip and her struggles, and her face twitched uncontrollably as the psycho's bark of triumph blew it against her skin again.

"Ha! For luck, my dear! Now – "

He yanked her head back yet again, arching her back like a bent bow, and poured the stuff over her throat and down her chest through the opened front of her jacket.

The taste of onions exploded in her mouth. The stuff seemed to evaporate into her flesh, leaving sick cold everywhere it touched.

'Endothermic reaction,' a little voice whispered in her head, and for just an instant she heard her mother's voice in her mind, complaining how none of the education she'd provided her daughter at the cost of so much time, trouble, and treasure had managed to stick...

'_Sorry, Mom. I learned a lot – you just always seem happier when I keep my mouth shut, period.'_

The world lurched and yawed in waves of sick cold, and her gorge pressed insistently against the back of her throat as she swallowed convulsively, desperately, over and over, intensely aware that puking while gagged would mean choking to death on her own vomit. And then –

Reality imploded.

The dust in the carpet under her knees flowed up in a current of honey-thick air to tap at the ends of her hair hanging against her face. Every miniscule longitudinal ridge in the bald freak's fingernails imprinted itself in the skin of her scalp. Colors sang at her. Size popped eggplant points. Ghoul boy gasped and the sound had the texture of fired brick.

"Ah, yes. I believe she's ready. Go ahead, my boy."

The bald psycho's voice swelled into shapes of age-darkened hornbeam, redolent with the scent of raw, plastic resins.

'_Synesthesia,'_ Ashley thought, trying to ground herself in the mundane mechanics of her own heartbeat, her own breathing. _'Oh, God – can you be allergic to a phantom, synesthesic smell? I __have__ to master this. I __have__ to. Now. Or die._'

The little ghoul looked a question spiky with raspberry points at the big, bald psychopath.

"Go on," that hornbeam and resin voice directed, happily. "I'll hold her still for you."

Ashley fought again, shattering waves of color into the shadowed air around her.

"Now, now," the big freak crooned as the tentacle emerged from the duct-taped slit in ghoul-boy's shabby coat, and twined itself out through the colors in the air.

'_Oh, God – please let me live long enough to kill both of them,'_ Ashley begged the universe, picturing herself dying on her mother's prized turkey carpet, brains and blood leaking down into the woolen pile, and the hardwood beneath...

The tentacle curled closer, an abnormal serpent feathered in prismatic kinesthesic points descending an invisible jungle tree, its orifice flexing, quatrefoil lobes opening and closing, pink and glistening with jagged crystal points, tasting the scent of her on the air, intention in every atom of it.

Alexi watched the thing, Quetzalcoatl winding through the shadows, in thrall to the picture it made as it wove its way nearer and nearer…

'_No. Oh, God, no. I have drawings I want to do, art I need to make. I want to learn to paint with oils. I want to fly a space plane into orbit. I'm going to race bikes. I...'_

The tentacle whipped forward faster than a cobra striking –

– and time thinned out to infinity.

Ashley tried to dive sideways in painful slow motion, shoved desperately with her feet in increments of motion that lingered as endlessly as photons falling into the event horizon of a black hole.

The bald freak held her head immobile, laughing delightedly in slow waves of carved bone, and all she had the leverage to do was arch her own back even more.

Her own screams echoed inside her skull as that tentacle lanced toward her vulnerable head – and something there was no word for snapped with a clean silence that divided the very universe.

Invisible lightning flooded her vision, and a force as indigo-blue as that lightning should have been slapped Alexi with the savage power of a fallen god. His shocked cry dopplered away, red-shifted in the infinitely lethargic passage of time, until it ended in a harsh yelp and a brutal thump as he impacted the post of the high bed and came down on the mattress. The bed springs twanged under the sudden strain in a texture like new-laid lacquer, and the muscles of her throat spasmed as the little ghoul rebounded gracelessly off the far side of the bed to thud to the floor beyond, the sound leaving a rough sulfurous scent in the air she breathed.

'_I will not die on my mother's oriental carpet,'_ some very small and composed voice declared in the sudden absence of screams in her head.

"Oh, yes! Oh, yes! God, yes!" the bald freak crowed in tones of carved ivory, almost dancing as he yanked her up by her aching, bound arms, to kiss the top of her head again. "I have searched the world over, through centuries – "

_'Oh God, here we go again with that same stupid rant,'_ she growled to herself – and that invisible turquoise lightning sledge-hammered him to the floor, and slammed him down again when he tried to scramble back to his feet, even though she tumbled back to her knees on the scarlet rug.

"You – "

Ashley turned her head to look at him in waves of chartreuse lace and little, slow-dancing flecks of fluorescent lime dust – and a blur of green-gold fire took him down again, hard enough to jounce her on her knees where she knelt on the floor. She grimaced under the tape as those knees protested the hard boards under the oriental carpet, glaring at him over the gag.

Something like shock chased across that scarred face and the blue-green light of an underwater explosion bloomed around him, through him.

That golden fire had other ideas – it grabbed him like a blazing dragon's huge, fiery maw – and wrenched him back from wherever he had intended to vanish to with the ease of a savage angel tossing a sinner into hell.

He struggled, wide-eyed and flailing, but the power hammered him down again with a single blow to the balls. He couldn't even manage a scream as the orange fire smacked his bald skull against the old, wide boards of the floor, then whipped itself around his throat – and started to squeeze.

'_I hope it kills you, freak,'_ Ashley thought at the thrashing madman. Somehow, through some twist in her mind, some kink in reality itself, she felt the force of her own emotions lensed into inhuman power, feeding the serpent's constricting scarlet loops like electricity to a super collider – and it felt... amazing.

The tape over her mouth pulled at the fierce grin it covered like an invisible ghoul, as she watched the bald freak's eyes bulge and bulge –

And then it was gone. The serpent, the power, the synesthesia, the super collider creating a new reality out of the force of her will alone…

Gone.

Reality whirled out of her perceptions like water corkscrewing clockwise down a drain.

'_Southern hemisphere…'_ she thought, watching with no interest at all as the pervert stopped thrashing on the floor…

He took a few hard breaths, and then got up, panting. He shook himself like a dog, settled his leather coat on his shoulders, and walked over toward her, slowly, cautiously.

'_And now I die on my mother's carpet after all,' _Ashley thought, the words in her mind detached from even the impulse to take action._ 'But I won't fall down when I do… can't even tell which way is down…'_

She peered at the approaching freak through the swirling world – and he was… smiling?

She frowned at this aberrant phenomenon, confused - what was the pervert smiling about - and he leaned down, reaching for her, with one long, lean hand –

_No!_

Reality telescoped, indigo and violet and a million colors of black, empty and thick with shadows of objects, places, buildings, people, like sketches engraved on air, transparent, incorporeal and yet very real as she rocketed through them like Time itself. Headed for –

She was – back at her mother's Sanctuary, standing in the ghost of the observation platform of the spire at the crossing of the basilica's nave and transept, a hundred feet off the ground, transparent as if it had been drawn in water on the night sky – and she could see straight through the solid stone she could feel under her boots, down to the mud and rocks and seeping river-slime under the foundations of the sub-basement below her mother's labs. Rain fell, thin and freezing, around her, through her, perceived, seen, but intangible to her, slicking the illusory stonework, coating the winter-weary grass in the courtyard below, and the wraithlike, translucent city that wrapped the horizon, simultaneously there and not there under low hanging clouds that existed in a world apart from… wherever she was.

And then –

'Well, well, well. I do confess myself impressed, my dear,' that deep, drawling voice informed her. 'You can have no idea how rare the ability actually is, to linger beyond the physical world, detached from it, but still within it. And this is your first trip too, no doubt. Brava, my dear. Brava! This is all I could have hoped for and more… though this appalling obsession for heights must be purely your mother's contribution to your heritage.'

The distaste in that last brought a fierce surge of satisfaction – even at the same time instinct recognized the arrogant drawl, and –

Ashley hurled herself forward, diving away from the pervert over the lacy elegance of an abruptly solid, wrought-iron railing, and out into the hard rain driving down through the cold and sudden reality of the night.

'NO!'

The word bellowed in her head and her ears alike. The dull grey of the ice-slicked lead of the basilica roof sang a single distant, soothing note to her as she hurtled down toward it and – light and mass slammed into her falling body like an air to air missile. She writhed, screaming against the gag, fighting something that wrenched her out of reality and a fist hit her head just as she landed a double-booted kick to –

White light exploded into darkness inside her skull, and she tore free, hurtling away. Consciousness gave up.

And then...

And then...


	4. Chapter 4 The Life Lived In The Mind

Webisode Based.

No Ownership. No Profit.

* * *

Cold sweat slicked every centimeter of her skin. She felt it – a chill that her leathers trapped against her trembling muscles, another facet to the unrelenting pain that raged in every major joint in her body, and invested every long muscle with a burn like glacial acid. It stung in the cut on her shoulder, even though the few hours since her mother had stitched it up felt like they'd been centuries in the passing. Her mouth tasted like every ghoul she'd ever hunted down at her mother's behest had taken a dump on her tongue.

Ashley stirred, realizing, distantly, that that sound in her ears was her own voice whimpering in pain.

'From the way it aches, every one of those ghouls kicked me in the skull on the way out, too,' she thought, wincing as she tried to lift her shaking head from where it seemed to be hanging over the metal back of some damned chair. The muscles spasmed in her neck, burning with the strain of the weight of her own skull, and she had to give up or pass out with the pain.

'_God, I can hear Henry callin' me a fat head now…'_ she thought, distantly.

"Ah, yes…" the freak's voice sing-songed from right in front of her, intent, amused – avid.

Ashley jumped, grimacing at the resulting pain, every iota of her attention refocused on the instant.

"The headache is most vile, is it not?"

"I've had worse," she croaked, and realized that he must have peeled the pad of tape off her mouth, if she could actually speak.

'_Good__. Now if I puke, I can do it on __him__.'_

"Indeed. Your mother has not raised you well, my dear," he said, the voice settling into a patronizing croon as he apparently strolled around her.

From the sound of his voice, and the noise of his shoes on the floor he was close, within arm's reach of her. Ashley forced herself to listen to his footsteps, fought to swallow as she listened.

And aimed.

'_Yeah, and the shakes and the headache don't matter a bit, freak!_' she thought, and whipped her bound feet up, as hard as she could –

Only to freeze, muscles jerking on the edge of spasm, and her heart hammering under her breastbone, sweat pouring down her face, pooling in the pits of her clenched-closed eyes.

The blade of his knife pressed a line of acid-cold across her throat.

'_Oh, shit – he wasn't where I thought he was. My spatial awareness is shot. I can't aim by sound – and that always goes last. That means my balance is probably fucked too. Oh, God. I won't be able to fight – '_

"Put your feet down, my sweet. Slowly," that deep voice directed, a definite hint of snicker now detectable in its patronizing croon. "By the third time even your dear old dad can see that one coming."

There was no choice left. Ashley obeyed, her muscles shuddering with the effort. The springs in the seat of the old chair twanged in protest under her butt as her heels hit the cement floor.

The freak chuckled.

"Yesss, that's a good little girl," he drawled.

"I. Am. Not. A. Little. Girl," Ashley bit out under the threat of that knife across her throat while the long muscles jumped and ticked in her shaking legs.

'_God, maybe I shouldn't keep antagonizing the freak if I don't have a hope of fighting - '_

The bald psycho crowed with laughter.

"My mistake! I do apologize, my dear! I should know better. I've had you in my hands, after all... Both figuratively and quite literally," he added with a sudden, sharp pinch to one nipple through the leather of her jacket.

"Damned freak!" Ashley spat through clenched teeth, her heels coming up off the floor before willpower controlled the reflexive jerk, and the weight of that knife still across her throat.

'Well, so much for trying not to provoke the psycho,' that little voice of her conscience observed, as she let her feet fall back to what felt like concrete.

"Very nice, by the way," the psycho added, his tone as absent as if he were a king complimenting the royal kitchens on something he hadn't actually tasted.

One large hand squeezed the breast he'd pinched – hard.

"Very nice, indeed."

'_Hell, I knew what you were talking about, pervert,'_ Ashley winced as her muscles clenched. She grimaced, even the skin and tissues of her breasts were intensely sore_. 'It's like having PMS from hell, only there's more pain and I'm probably gonna get a __knife__ in the gut, not cramps.' _

'_God, let me kill this psychotic son of a bitch!'_ she pleaded inside her own skull as she tried to convince willpower to relax those now reluctant muscles ticking in her calves and thighs before something cramped.

He traced the trembling muscles of her thigh with his fingertips, chuckled at the way they twitched under his hand.

"Stop touching me," she managed.

The psycho snorted merrily.

"You don't feel at all well, do you?" he crooned. "Bathed in sweat, yet shaking with cold. Every muscle in your body burns and trembles… Even the light that leaks in through your own eyelids is an agony to you. And you do suffer so very prettily… Such a pity you're my own flesh and blood…"

'_Oh, God – of course. A sadist. What other kind of pervert could the freak possibly be? And probably a sex murderer too, if his fondness for that knife means anything. Great. Just great. Baldy can raise ghoul boy to enjoy killing women with his 'giant worm', and then he won't even have to go to the trouble of making his own psycho porn – ' _

"Still, perhaps we should have you sit up. That might be the better for you. At least you'd be able to swallow without fighting… an uphill battle… as gravity would have it. Here now, why don't I help you? Surely you cannot be comfortable like that."

"And cut my own throat – on that knife!"

The psycho barked out a laugh.

"No, indeed. Not while I have other plans for you, my dear!"

The pressure across her throat vanished, and she tried to lift her own head, scowling at the pain if it.

It hardly hurt any more at all when the freak hauled her upright by the hair.

…_blunt nails scraping stinging rowels in her scalp… _

Ashley shoved the memory away.

'_I guess it's a good thing he has short nails or I'd be bleeding from multiple scalp wounds. And I don't think I'm up to blood loss right now.'_

She slumped forward in the creaking chair, fighting the shakes and tremors in her muscles and the pain lancing through her skull in incendiary spikes. Even the motion of breathing felt like it threatened insanity from pain alone.

'_What the hell was in that crap he gave me?'_ Ashley wondered, trying to control her body. _'If I puke I'm gonna die from the pain in my head. This's worse than any migraine I ever had, and I heave with every one of them.'_

"I'm impressed you'd have the determination to attempt to kick me again, much as I deplore your barbaric impulses," the ghoul mused. "Especially… as I suspect that every slightest motion feels as if it will crack your very skull…"

"I'd rather crack yours," Ashley ground out.

'_Oh, yeah – so much for that whole not-provoking thing…'_

The psycho tutted softly. "Of course you would. You are my darling daughter, after all…"

"'Darling daughter'! – after you had your pet ghoul try to kill me!" Ashley snarled, against the pain lancing through her head.

She heard the bald psycho snort again.

"Now why ever would I bother with you if you were nothing more than some by-blow whose mother had altered her out of any and all resemblance to her father, eh?" he mused. "Remade it solely in her own self-righteous image – "

"My mother wouldn't have to engineer me to make sure I wouldn't be like you! You are not my father!"

"Such a stubborn little animal," he mused. "If you are not my daughter, however did you come by the gift of those thoroughly Abnormal powers you so clearly possess, eh, my dear?"

_The power like a supercollider smashing reality into a new shape at her command… the world seen as its own ghost, like a transparent sketch painted on darkness…_

"Same way you got 'em, no doubt. Accidentally," Ashley declared, eyes still squeezed shut.

'_Oh, God – Oh God – I'm a freak too. I'm a freak – and I'll have to own up to it in public. If Mom can't get it out of me, what'm I gonna do? Hell – what'm I gonna do when she finds out?' _

For an instant she saw a mental image…

_Herself, hiding in the shadows of a filthy alley, dirty, ragged, a knife in her hand and the voices of her mother and Dene conferring about how best to take her, while Henry alternately whined and demanded they just kill her if they got the chance. She could feel the chill, dank air on her face, feel the ache of hunger days old, feel her body shaking with the cold that her torn and tattered clothing couldn't keep out. _

And somehow, even in her mind's eye, the gist of her mother's next words seemed as inevitable as gravity itself:_ 'If she proves difficult, I've no problem with giving her up as a bad job, Henry. And then you may certainly shoot her. If you can.'_

Ashley shivered where she sat, bound and blinded with pain, in the damned uncomfortable chair with the noisy springs – and a murdering psycho freak lurking somewhere beyond her ability to defend herself.

'_Oh God. When she finds out I can do freak shit– Mom's gonna lock me in the Menagerie until she figures out how to burn it out of my skull, and who gives a fuck if it kills me in the process? And the shittiest part of it is, I want her to burn it out of me, even if it does kill me._

'_God. What's wrong with me that I want my own mother to kill me if that's the only way to get rid of this? Oh, God.'_

"Oh, no, my dear. I have the pleasure of assuring you that your conception was entirely deliberate," the psycho informed her.

"Yeah, well – the pleasure's all yours, freak," she growled, swallowing hard.

"Indeed not! Either your mother quite enjoyed herself, or she was the finest actress who never graced a stage," he declared, nostalgia creeping into his tone, rich as a purr.

"In case you never knew, ghoul, the mental image of your own mother having sex is one of the biggest squicks of the twentieth century," Ashley grimaced. "And that's before we even get into the whole 'psychopath murderer in bed with your mother' thing."

"Ah, but you were conceived in the nineteenth century, my dear."

"All of the above plus your mother in a corset and button-up knickers – way worse than the last mental image," Ashley declared. "And that's still before we get to the psycho in – or out – of his underwear! And I was born in 1987, freak. My mom may be the most secretive, uptight, anal, overage Englishwoman on the planet, but there's no way even Helen Magnus could hold in a kid for eighty eight years!"

The freak actually laughed out loud.

"Maybe that's what the corsets are for," he suggested. "Or perhaps… the buttons on the undergarments?"

"Maybe you just need a fucking clue, ghoul! Or ten. Or fifty. Human beings aren't reptiles. They can't hold in the offspring until the environment suits them!"

"Ah, even more of your education shows itself. Good. Very good. And I must assure you, with science, humans can do precisely that, my dear. I remember watching as my sweet Helen froze you, and all your siblings – "

"What!" Ashley squawked, heedless of the way her own voice seemed to make her head shudder like a bell about to crack. "No way! No fucking way!"

The psycho snorted merrily. "Indeed. The fucking did come before that – "

"I'm an only child! My mom is not some mad scientist with a freezer full of embryos in the basement!"

'_Oh, no… she keeps other mad scientist shit in the basement… A giant secret research lab and monsters and ghouls and freaks of nature like you and me, Psycho…'_ Ashley thought.

"The pantry then?" the psycho suggested brightly. "Just in case… you somehow fail to satisfy her requirements, of course. Helen does always make a backup plan."

"Which anyone knows five minutes after they meet her. So not impressed with your fairy tales, Baldy," Ashley spat.

Another snort.

"Such bravado… Of course, I suspect you've already failed to satisfy her requirements – at least the ones she had when you were conceived. Helen wanted a daughter who was kind and good, gentle and refined. A tall, slim beauty like her mother and her mother's mother before her. Spirited, yes, but full of womanly grace, a scholar and a scientist whom none could reproach on any front, not her deportment nor her manners, nor her intelligence nor her learning. She wanted, in short, a lady. And she got you – who are, are, compared to the above – short. Both literally and figuratively. A tiny, over-developed, violent, foul-mouthed, barbarian. If I had not other means of confirming your identity, even I would never have guessed such as you could be spawned from a beautiful creature like your Mother."

Ashley couldn't control the flinch.

"…_My God, Ashley! I swear I brought the wrong baby home from the hospital! You have the manners of a savage – even a barbarian would turn up his nose at such behavior!"_

"Did you ever think – that maybe my mother likes me this way?" she husked at him. "Maybe – her requirements have changed since you knew her a century ago? Maybe my Mom raised me to be exactly like this, because she wanted the best ghoul hunter in the country? She wanted a daughter who could do all the parts of her work she isn't the best at herself!"

The ghoul sighed theatrically.

"My dear daughter... I fear Helen has taught you a false picture of your world, and yourself, my dear. Blinded you to who you are and what you can be. Left you ignorant and incurious and unaware that you are either, let alone both. Deceived you into believing she cherishes you."

"My Mom loves me, you freak," Ashley hissed.

'In her own way,' that treacherous little voice whispered in the back of her mind.

'_Even if it means she never says anything without adding a criticism, when she says anything that isn't entirely criticism to start with – '_

"She loves your skill as a weapon in her hands. Oh, yes. That much is absolutely true. I've been doing a bit of research while you were unconscious, my dear. And you are quite a fine weapon – swift, skilled, courageous – with a few more years of experience and the right… training… you could be a force to be reckoned with, indeed. An unstoppable weapon, and oh-so obedient as your mother directs your every deadly action, controls even your smallest thought. And it will all come to pass because you're too ignorant to see through the illusion she's cheated you into believing is love."

"My mother loves me!" Ashley insisted, fighting back the urge to cry.

'_She loves me now – even if she never will again, after she finds out I'm a ghoul too – if she can't fix me, I'll be an 'experimental subject' and nothing more, ever again… ' _

The big freak snorted. "I think that you'll learn different when she arrives, my dear. Here, now – I believe we had best see to your comfort more thoroughly, lest you not survive until your mother makes her appearance. You are looking most unwell."

Something hard touched her lips and she jerked backward with a shriek born of pain, as much as surprise. The sound of it felt like it cracked the bones of her sinuses.

"Now, now, now," the psycho chided. "It is simply water, which should provide some relief to you, not as much as hot tea would do, but still, it should help, as I believe that scream did not…"

"Master of the obvious," Ashley groused, trying to figure out if she was tasting blood in the back of her throat.

'_If I keep yanking his chain, I wonder if the freak'll be able to wait to cut my throat until his plans change – '_

"Dear God, how I shall enjoy teaching you manners!" he laughed. "Here now. Drink, or I will – and I assure you, I can – force it upon you. For your own good, of course."

"And what makes you think I want to drink anything you give me? I feel like shit now because of that crap you dumped on me last time!"

"Inherited your mother's attitude problem, too, I see," the psycho chuckled.

"Couldn't possibly have gotten any of it from you, cou – "

A hand grabbed Ashley's chin and held it despite her harsh start, and she felt the bottle against her mouth again, as the hand pried it open, then he was pouring the water into her mouth. It came too fast, again, and she was choking – and crying with the pain of gulping the water down and coughing it back up again – before he took the bottle away.

"There, there – " the bald freak said, with absolutely patent insincerity.

He slapped her on the back from where he stood beside her and Ashley yelped, knocked out of a spasm of choking.

"I believe that part of your distress is a lack of fluids in your system. Your mother told me once that her potion drives moisture out of the tissues, at the same time it leaves the blood vessels very dilated. And I gave you quite a strong dose…"

"So I'm dehydrated, and my blood pressure is crap," Ashley rasped. "Blood sugar and electrolytes too, probably. No wonder I feel like shit."

"Language," the psycho warned.

"Like you're offended, psycho," Ashley growled.

_'Is my headache better, or is it just wishful thinking?'_ she wondered.

"I thought you'd be too busy reliving the warm jollies from all the flies you've pulled the wings off, and all the people you've just plain offed, to notice little things like my vocabulary," she continued

Said psycho snorted, grinning. "Quite. And quite… deliciously jolly… the memories are, too, my dear. Do keep that in mind."

"That is so revolting."

That brought a chuckle that sounded quite literally delighted.

'_So happy to keep you entertained, freak.'_

"I see you've picked up a smattering of medical knowledge from proximity to your mother. Good," he declared. "Apparently you have some native intelligence under all that Neanderthal bravado."

"Love you too, Daddie-o," Ashley sniped, daring to pull her eyelids open a slit while the psycho laughed aloud, and reached toward her.

Ashley froze, the action absolutely instinctive, and somewhere in her mind she heard the memory of her mother's voice…

'_Next time, for God's sake, stand still! Becoming a mother was a very difficult task, I'll have you know, and I won't forgive you for doing me out of the job, Ashley! How can you possibly be this foolish at your age? Even tiny little baby rabbits know to freeze when they see the fox, but, __you__ – you see a vampire, the absolute top-predator of homo sapiens, and you promptly run__ toward__ it! Have you nothing even __resembling__ survival instincts, Ashley!'_

'_I guess you'd be happy now, Mom,'_ she thought, as that hand came up in her face, and she couldn't even manage to force her own body to lean back –

The freak grabbed her chin, long fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, and Ashley yelled, miraculously released from paralysis by his touch, fighting her own uncooperative muscles to get her feet up in something that might at least resemble a defensive posture, as the psycho raised the empty bottle in the other hand, and –

Wiped the sweat and tears off her face with the backs of his fingers.

"There, now," he said, releasing her and straightening again.

Ashley blinked up at him, completely non-plussed.

'_All of a sudden the ghoul has an asymptomatic attack of __nice__? And we're back at his bat cave? What the fuck – '_

Behind her, something clanged like boots on a metal grating, and Ashley whipped around in pure reflex, wincing at the renewed spikes of pain in her abused head, only to see ghoul-boy du jour kicking his heels where he sat on the metal stairs behind her, watching the psycho talking to her in the dull light.

"Expecting someone else were you, dear daughter?" Baldy drawled.

Ashley jerked back around – and nearly fell out of the chair as the world reeled around the agony that erupted in her head.

The big freak shoved her upright again in the chair with a plangent twang of tired springs and a scar-wrinkling grin.

'_Oh, yeah – that's gonna be another bruise…'_

"Sudden movements will be a bad idea for a while, I'm afraid," he informed her.

"Oh – really. Never would've guessed," Ashley panted, swallowing against the nausea again making its presence known against the back of her throat.

'_Fuck – the headache __is__ better, even with this rising gorge thing – '_ she thought_. 'It doesn't feel like 'puke and die' this time. God, what did he give me – will it show up in Mom's tox scans? She's gotta know what it is – she made it! God – I hope she made an antidote, too when she made the potion for the freak.'_

"Your mother's sarcasm, indeed. No one could ever tell her anything, either," the bald freak said, strolling across the room to put the bottle from the water he'd poured into her on the crude table across the room.

'_And how the hell did that old wooden table get down here anyway?'_ Ashley wondered, distracted out of the desperation of getting this horror of an abnormality fixed.

'_Oh, hell – damnit, Ashley! Focus!'_ she snapped at herself. _ 'You can worry about whether your mother can fix what the ghoul did to you after you figure out how to get away from him!'_

"I guess you tried, huh?" she husked.

'_Talk to me, ghoul. Don't let me think about what's waiting for me when I get home – or I'll never be able to figure a way to __get__ home.'_

_In her mind's eye, her mother was autopsying a werewolf, killed while it was in flux, half-way between its two forms, and Helen Magnus was looking more delighted than Ashley could ever remember feeling on any Christmas morning in Ashley's own life as she bent over the mangled thing, long dark hair tied back in a lackadaisical tail, scalpel in hand – and on the next slab over, next in line for Helen Magnus's post mortem attentions and dissecting pleasure, lay the corpse of a small and very well-endowed, blonde woman, her lips almost black with post-mortem lividity and pre-mortem cyanosis…_

"Oh, indeed," the psycho agreed, sauntering back toward her. "I tried to tell her many things – and I'll have many more to tell her when she comes to see me here," the psychopath drawled. "Such as… our daughter is even more Abnormally gifted than her father."

"NO!" Ashley screamed.


End file.
